Email Article

When William Tildesley complained to Tumblr’s founder David Karp expressing his disappointment about recent downtime, and asking about issues with various other features, he got a response which was unexpected. William was writing to ask not only about the level of uptime Tumblr has had over the past months, “…but also with countless issues posting, queuing” (which he only realised was down when he visited their help page), and about their “‘backup’ mac application deciding not to work”. He duly got a personal response from Karp, the 24-year-old founder of Tumblr. Here we should mention that William has blogged with Tumblr for two years and has bought various premium themes from them – recently paying good money to be featured in the directory of blogs on Tumblr – so he’s a paying customer, and a loyal one which Tumblr should value.

Karp responded abruptly, saying that “…we have no interest in customers that will go out of their way to discourage our entire team” continuing to say that this is a “…team that regularly spends their nights and weekends working feverishly to provide the best service we can against extraordinary challenges”. He signed off saying that “Plenty of services will import Tumblr blogs. Please go away.”

I’m not sure what one can glean from this e-mail which Karp sent out – although perhaps some questions should be asked. Firstly we’re unsure how William was “discouraging the entire team”, although beside that point one would have to ask why the team behind a company which has received in excess of $40 million venture capital funding is required to spend “their nights and weekends working feverishly”. We’d also have to side with William here and say that it’s debatable whether Tumblr is offering “…the best service they can”.

A knee-jerk response like this which is immediately defensive clearly shows that Karp has something to hide. Perhaps from this we can ascertain that there is some sort of internal friction with his team – perhaps some dislocation, maybe they’re overworked, or perhaps even some personal insecurity on his part. One thing is certain though – and it’s also how William responded to the e-mail. If Tumblr carries on the way it is – it won’t keep up with it’s competitors – namely Posterous and WordPress.

Many would argue that since Tumblr is a relatively new start-up they should be given some leeway when it comes to the level of service one expects, and also given that Tumblr is a ‘free’ service, apparently we should always expect less. (Should this be the case – especially with Freemium services?) Additionally, as one commenter on Hacker News pointed out, some might ague that “He’s young”. “He’s actually a nice guy”, going on to say that “These are the kinds of statements that should only carry weight when you have a personal relationship. A relationship with a company/website/app is no more or less than the sum of your interactions with them. I have a “good” relationship with Apple and Amex. A “bad” one with AT&T etc., based on transactions, not personal relations”.

The point here though, is not just where the $40 million funding is going with this relatively straight forward blogging service – and whether they should be spending money paying twenty fashion bloggers to go to New York fashion week as opposed to sorting out the technical issues plaguing their service first, but it’s also about the attitude of its founder.

Tumblr has a limited lifespan if Karp continues to treat some of his most valuable users the way he is, and especially when he quite literally tells them to “go away”, we can’t help but assume that that is exactly what they will do. These people are early-adopters, and evangelists – a start-up’s most valuable clientèle.

Karp seems to be glossing over, or ignoring some real issues with Tumblr and concentrating on others which really aren’t integral to the service itself. Surely a service with this amount of funding behind it can afford enough resources to host animated gifs for instance; a direct quote from their help centre reads “…please avoid uploading unreasonably large animated GIFs.” in case the “server runs out of memory” – because uploading animated GIFs apparently is “computationally intensive”. The point here isn’t that they can’t host animated gifs – of course that doesn’t matter – but surely server resources should be the top priority for a start-up growing at the pace which it is, and with the seemingly abundant funding at it’s disposal. The Oatmeal recently suggested a new Tumblr downtime mascot for instance, and it looks like Tumblr has adopted it as of the other day – a quick reaction – but should they really be spending their time doing this, as opposed to fixing the real issue? Are their priorities right?

Another issue seems to be with customer service – and the means by which Tumblr notify customers that there are issues. Should users be expected to constantly monitor their help page or Twitter stream to check that integral features such as back up and queue are working?

So all in all the recent $40 million funding win is good news for Tumblr in what’s been a very turbulent past few months, marked by significant downtime and reliability issues with its service, although could throwing money at the service just exasperate issues? Could Karp’s care-free and cavalier attitude be the ultimate downfall of Tumblr?

In a second response a day later, Karp reiterated the fact that William should “go away” if he has a problem with Tumblr, and in the same e-mail he accused William’s short and polite initial e-mail as wholly “unconstructive [sic]” – so he’s not turning a blind eye to the issues – he’s effectively denying they are an issue in the first place. In fact, his team are behind him and giving all the support he needs – support that is, for his attitude – and his very poor response to some real issues; 60-year-old Kavin O’Farrel, a Community Manager at Tumblr, who accidentally CC’d William in to a response said “Thanks, David. Your response was awesome. I really appreciate it”. Perhaps the team are repeatedly telling themselves they’re doing a good job – or moreover perhaps this is a sign of bad leadership – not just because they can’t admit they have issues with reliability, but also because they are having to work “nights and weekends” to run what they think is the “best service”. Since being dubbed a “play boy of tech” perhaps he is too busy in “yet another” photo shoot to care…

Some say that Karp is the creator of a “a non-revenue generating hipster blogging site” led by a founder who “steals [VC’s] money and uses it for his own pleasure” – possibly in reference to his use of a private jet (though we’re not sure it is a private jet) – but on a more serious note, others have more justified, nonetheless equally vocal opinions. A quick search for “downtime” on Tumblr reveals how others feel negatively about the issues too – interestingly in a post entitled “Tumblr – listen before it’s too late.”, Jon Beckett has some strong words for Tumblr – which couldn’t be more accurate and in line with the points we’re trying to get across here. He writes “Without users you are nothing” continuing to say “do something, before it’s too late”. He expands on this point – saying that “The web startups on the west coast you [Tumblr] seem to like comparing yourself with are significantly different in one regard. They care about what they are doing, and they therefore care about the service they provide to their users.” He also picks up on the whole fashion bloggers thing – saying that “…you might term it hippy evangelism, or misguided vision, but most startups are doing something they believe in, and lifting heaven and earth to make it happen. Why bother sending 20 bloggers to Fashion Week when nobody can read what they’ve written because the platform they are published on is so unstable?“. Karp would probably argue that his seemingly overworked team are indeed lifting heaven and earth to create what he sees as “the best service” – though most would tend to disagree with respect to the evidence on the ground. Just as William said in a response to David Karp’s abrupt e-mail “…users will only stand a certain amount of downtime and technical issues before they move on to competing services.” So what do you think about the way Tumblr is heading?

This is by no means a recent issue too – Tumblr has been ignoring complaints routinely for the past year whilst Karp apparently indulges in the money he gains from funding – in June last year blogger Alice Walker Wright proclaimed that “David Karp Doesn’t Care About Your Complaints, He Has A Sweet Ride“. We can see that the queue feature wasn’t working correctly even back then – despite having now received in excess of $40 million funding, and apparently hiring even more ‘professional business staff‘. Alice went on to say that “it just feels like he’s been on a 4 month spending spree”.

So can it stand up for much longer against it’s competitors Posterous and WordPress? Will it face a backlash from it’s users? Disregarding those threatening to kill themselves last time Tumblr went down, many genuinely moved to other services, albeit not in their masses – so is this a sign of things to come?. Tumblr is popular now, but if it continues to be plagued with issues (which do matter), then will its popularity fade as quickly as it gained it - will it go the way of MySpace sooner, rather than later – especially under the leadership of Karp? Let us know in the comments below.

UPDATE: William has got back in touch with us to say that he’s now leaving Tumblr, saying that although he will be leaving behind some of the friendships he has made there, a working blogging platform is more important to him. He has also since e-mailed Tumblr twice more asking for a response, to no avail.

UPDATE: A commenter on Hacker News has said that they “…hope that Karp realises his mistake and makes a public apology. At least this way he would look mature enough to admit his mistakes.” The commenter went on to say that they were “…about to start a personal blog on Tumblr, and will not be now due to this article”.

UPDATE: A separate commenter on Hacker News made the point that the original e-mail sent to Tumblr should be posted in its entirety. With the permission of William, here it is. Once again we should reiterate that William has been a very active Tumblr user for over two years, and is a paying member in the form of purchasing premium themes and a directory listing. He’s also quite an evangelist for the service and has never uttered a bad word publicly about Tumblr – in fact he has had nothing but praise for them until he received this response. He tells us that he did give Tumblr a fair chance before going public – he emailed them privately with his concerns, though after receiving the abrupt response from David Karp felt the need to make the issues public, and so he got in touch with us at PostDesk.

Here’s the e-mail William sent.

I am writing this email to you to express my recent disappointment with Tumblr.

Not only with the level of uptime tumblr has had over the past few months, but with countless issues posting, queueing (which I only realised was down when I visited your help page), and your ‘backup’ mac application deciding not to work.

I would move to a different service, but with no export feature and with the friendships I’ve made through tumblr I will have to hope that you fix these issues in the near future.

Without a shadow of doubt, it will go the way of MySpace (or possibly Piczo) – It’s already a very niche audience that uses it. It’s vulnerable, and if one speaks up, like sheep, all will follow. Tumblr will be an internet wasteland of porn and ex-4chan users.

“A knee-jerk response like this which is immediately defensive clearly shows that Karp has something to hide.”

Wow – you know how to jump to a sweeping conclusion. How does an angry email “clearly show” that he has something to hide? Thats quite a leap of logic!?

My immediate conclusion is that Karp is tired about everyone whining about the downtime. They might have valid complaints, but when thats all everyone is saying to you you probably get fed up of it. “Downtime!” “Downtime!” “Downtime!”

After a while you’d tell people to shove it. Its not the right response either, but its more likely than “having something to hide”.

Just my 2 cents.

If I were you, I’d avoid I would avoid peddling opinion as fact. You could be absolutely correct but you haven’t really provided anything to backup your opinion other than a few selective articles. Instead you went with a kind of “when did you stop beating your wife?” kind of approach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question).

I’ve never used Tumblr and I don’t plan to start anytime soon. That said, the people who are addicted to it like crack cocaine aren’t going to go anywhere else.

The people who dabble aren’t the people Tumblr is looking to keep anyway. I work for an IT company, and I can relate to the feeling of entitlement people get when they’re using a completely free service.

If Tumblr charged for their blogs, I would be up in arms with the rest of you. He may be a bit arrogant, but get over yourselves, people. Start up a wordpress or a posterous instead. And if the thought of not having a Tumblr makes you hyperventilate, you need to step outside.

I had a tumblr account, and couldn’t stand the constant downtime. I went through all of my articles and copy/pasted them to my MobileMe site. I liked a lot about the service, but in the end it came to the one thing the Internet is all about… Accessibility of information!

I work for a large multinational software company whose clients manage billions of dollars of goods. I don’t get paid an all-star Electronic Arts type salary. Those days are over for a lot of developers.

I’m responding as a software developer tired of users giving developers shit when us developers are working hard already. Whether it is managers, support desk or stuff directly from the users — users need to grow up. CRAP HAPPENS. Gamers are the worst bunch of all.

1.) The email William sent reads as a frustrated and disappointed user and takes no regard for the possibility that it may discourage someone else. What makes William any more significant than David?

2.) There ARE human beings on the other end of receiving emails.

3.) It sounds like he’s frustrated and didn’t use the 5 minute rule before responding. If you’ve ever worked in a software development environment where you are responsible for critical systems (at least to you), then yes, your email could very much be discouraging when you’re already working hard. It’s just “one more thing” frustrating you.

There is a helpful way to ask a question and there is a discouraging way. Sometimes you can shake it off, other times ya’ just want to tell them go away. Business 101: If your client doesn’t like the service and they are going to be more harmful than helpful, fire the client. I’ve done this to several people on side projects and my employer has done this to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Customers complain, get frustrated, and even angry — but when someone starts using the word “disappointed” we start saying “Hey, if it isn’t for you, then go somewhere else”. David’s email should have been better written, but he’s fully in his right — whether Tumblr has quarterly reveneues of $0 or $1bn

@Jared — hiring firms and talent that works ain’t easy and a bunch of them have quirks. Just because someone else does it does not mean it’s easy. Every situation is different… I only know this from industry experience, not as a user.

Go to any community and you will find some disgruntled users who will be willing to send their grips to anyone to get attention. Go to any startup and you will find, cash-flow friendly or not, limited resources that have to be prioritized.

Please try to write about meaningful things. Does so-and-so care is so high school.

“One very important point that William fails to mention about his email to us – he spent the time to track down every Tumblr employees email and sent it to the entire team. It was way over-the-top, and yes, discouraging to the team.”

The editorial team here should disclose any conflicts they have on this topic if such conflicts exist. As a former journalist, I can tell you that this story seems absurdly one-sided and would never fit the objectivity criteria for any reputable publication.

Certainly blogs don’t have to adhere to any such standards, but why hasn’t the author of the article made his name known instead hiding behind the safe confines of “editorial team”? How do you know this William person? When did you come to know him and in what capacity? What communication did William send you and what did you do to validate it’s veracity? All questions I’d like to better understand before you start ripping on a startup CEO.

Wow. Reading the HN comment thread and the comments by JohnMaloney provide quite a bit of context. Another reason why this article on postdesk seems like a shameless grab for attention and traffic. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. While everyone can agree that Mr. Karp ought to have handled this better, William is not without significant blame here. Stop being vultures trying to build your traffic on sensationalized and totally trash worthy stories.

I don’t think it matters to people if he’s a douche. Most of his users are young, they can care less. It’s a simple, awesome blogging platform, I’m sure folks would leave and throw away their ‘journal’ entries :p

Karp’s email may not be a shining work of customer service, but neither is William’s a thoughtful note of constructive critique. This posts strikes me as a lot of drama over nothing.
Perhaps Tumblr needs to staff up to deal with the downtime without burning the midnight oil so much, but the current level of service is well within my threshold of tolerance – given my investment in building an audience there. Tumblr is more than a CMS like WordPress or Posterous. The reason those services don’t have this problem is because they don’t enable the level of interaction and engagement that Tumblr has through reblogging and don’t come with an audience more or less built in.
In my opinion, anyone who would move over an email like that doesn’t really get the service and will probably be better off hosting a more traditional blog somewhere else.

Is David too young for so much responsibility? His lack of maturity and experience appears evident.

This is a side effect of the Web’s success; young and bright people being plunged into coping with the pressures of big business. Innovators don’t necessarily make good business people and real business skills can take years to develop.

It seems you left out the email at first because the valediction is rather rude. Had he closed with “Sincerely” then the email might come off as constructive but as it is, it is snide and smug and really seems to make Karp’s response much less of an issue.

As to this article, it is shoddy. You bring in radical critics using weasel words. You rightly dismiss their vitriol but regardless, you have mentioned them (Fox News employs similar tactics) and their claims hang in the air. Its unclear why you have an axe to grind with Tumblr or why you felt the need to list every complaint you could Google up in what could otherwise be a simple discussion of emails and PR but your approach betrays your bias and makes you look foolish.

There’s no excuse (and no strategic reason) for treating a customer like this, regardless of the circumstances. I can understand one sending an inappropriate email as a knee-jerk reaction, out of anger. It wouldn’t make it right, but everyone can be caught at the wrong moment. But, Karp actually sent a 2nd email the next day, with the same, indefensible point!

I actually feel sorry for the VCs who invested in this ignorant little boy who obviously has a lot to learn about the fundamentals of business.

I can write a few thousand words about how shabbily I’ve been treated – though I drive enough traffic to tumblr to be listed in their top 50 blogs, they had blocked my fixed IP and I was labeled a “hacker” by the “support team.” I received one response from Mr Karp where he laid out the “charges” against me, no reply afterward. Since then, my less-trafficked tumblrs have had all sorts of “service issues.” Once I find a suitable blogging platform, I’m taking all of it elsewhere, to a place they have value for people that supply content that drives massive traffic. I can tell you with certainty the only tumblrs Mr Karp sees having any value are the Newsweeks, NY Times, etc – the rest have not a bit of value to him. Anyone wanting more detail, email me.

Interesting article, but I would agree it seems slightly biased. I’d advise anyone to do their own research wherever possible. We live in an information age where anyone can access “information” instantly, and just as quickly pass it on without researching its validity.

I have been using Tumblr for a few months now and I enjoy it a lot. I use it recreationally, so I suppose I don’t feel very uptight with downtime. Maybe if I was using it for marketing purposes etc. that might be an issue.

This is so far from article worthy.
One and a half thousand words from someone who seems to have a nasty vendetta against David Karp, for no apparent reason whatsoever except that the site he created has issues sometime. Are you going to write about Mark Zuckerberg next because he won’t make a dislike button? Please.

If you want to complain to a public platform, maybe you should get a Tumblr and complain to your heart’s content on there, instead of publishing this and trying to pretend it’s actually meaningful news.

he should care instead of being an asshole about. tumblr’s email support sucks, I don’t know why people claim they reply back fast, because they don’t and there’s just too many things wrong with that stupid site…

I use to advocate Tumblr to all my friends and family because of their simplicity. I use to blog from Blogger and transitioned to Tumblr quite some time ago. My experiences were great with Tumblr up until this month when Tumblr literally made my head explode. I am a student, and I am an entrepreneur. In order to eliminate costs I thought it would be in my best interest to operate my business function with Tumblr until I was in the financial position to get off. So for the past 8 months I had maintained a blog called PicPackIT that focused on the packaging behind products. My Facebook likes went from 80 to 320 in a matter of one week. That said I felt I should upgrade the look on the current platform of Tumblr. So I purchased a theme from ThemeForest.net and had no problem with installation, given that I know how to code.

After a month or two of the template working, I thought I would be in cruise control until my SmartPhone application and website is developed. However, Tumblr made my journey quite bumpy – and they weren’t even sorry about it.

One day I tried to make edits and I noticed I couldn’t. I simply entered a code wrong in the custom CSS. Each time I would save my changes it would prompt me to reset my password for security reasons. Given that I didn’t notice this at first glance, I emailed Tumblr for help. I would have called them – but they don’t offer phone support…

I fixed the problem before I heard back from Tumblr. I heard back 48 hours, as they warned me, and they sent me an email with ways on how to fix the problem – but their suggestions wouldn’t have fixed the problem. For an operating business, 48 hours is a long time to wait for an email that wouldn’t have helped. So I emailed them thanking them for their time but I was disappointed that I had to find the solution before they could email me, nor was the solution in the email. I made it loud and clear that the problem was fixed.

However Tumblr apparently didn’t know how to read. 24 hours after I sent my reply to their reply to my problem, they sent me an email saying they reset my account in order to fix the problem. Not only did I lose all my posts and information, I did it without giving permission – because I didn’t tell Tumblr to do that. I told them my problem was fixed, not broken. But they still went at it and reset all the hard work I put into my business.

I was furious. I emailed back and forth that entire day. All they would do is email me. I wanted to be compensated for my losses in any capacity (whether it was a $5 gift card or even a free template) and wanted to speak to someone on the phone. But all they kept doing was emailing me – telling me they can’t make phone calls. What business doesn’t use a phone? Apparently Tumblr.

What really ticked me off wasn’t the lack of a phone call – it was the lack of personal service. All they kept saying was “I’m sorry” for a mistake THEY made that destroyed my operation. THEY made this mistake WITHOUT MY PERMISSION, and THEY FAILED TO COMPENSATE ME IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM. A 21 year old college kid who is trying to pay off his student loans deserved better treatment.

But I’m just a number to Tumblr. I’m just a user who was told to “go away” even though I’m just a user who encouraged friends and family to Tumblr. And above all, David did not respond to any of my tweets.

I had a lot of thoughts as I read this article. I won’t question the relevancy of the subject matter because if the author put this much time into a piece, it’s at the very least important to them. Something baffled me, however, and it led me to this question:

What company truly values their customers?

These are businesses, whose bottom line is to make a profit. I don’t recall there being too many thank you cards that follow after you receive your receipt. It would be nice if the higher ups could be nice, warm, and endearing, but it’s not necessary in terms of getting the most out of their product. I get the feeling that Mr. Karp has a ‘love it or leave it’ view when it comes to his product, and I’m fine with that. The tone of this article implies that Mr. Karp shouldn’t act this way. But, aren’t we past that juvenile view of the world where we lament how things should be. Frankly, his response is a breath of fresh air when compared to the canned responses we often get from ‘the boss.’ Like the racist who tells you how they feel, at least you know where you stand. Could Mr. Karp have been more tactful in his response? Sure, if you need that. But, if you need that from everyone who is responsible for every product you use, life will be difficult to navigate. I use tumblr, and will continue to do so. I am a fan of Mark Zuckerberg and he seems like a nice guy, but I choose not to use Facebook. We live in a society now where privacy is a bigger concern when using utilities, than how nice the boss is.

The views expressed on the platform for editorial content, discussion and debate at PostDesk.com are those of the individual contributors and are attributable to authors only in a personal capacity (unless otherwise explicitly stated). The views expressed on PostDesk.com are not representative of the views of PostDesk Ltd. Contributions are not monitored or reviewed prior to publication. Whilst contributors are advised to adhere to our community guidelines, this cannot be guaranteed.